Educator ~ Writer ~ Morgan Driver ~ Welshie Owner

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” John 14: 27-28

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ” John 15: 12

Yesterday afternoon, I attended the memorial service for one of the kindest men I have ever known, a dear old friend of my parents, who was always a presence in our family memory even though we rarely saw him in my adulthood. His name and his wife’s are part of the lexicon of friendship in my life from the very start and when I read about his death, I was certain I’d go to his service because my father couldn’t and my mother was gone. Because his presence had meant so much to both of them, I would go. My brother also came, from Houston, because we remembered. We knew his family. We honored his presence in our lives, his steadfast compassion, his kindness like a branching stream spreading out to reach the sea.

At the service, I met again his little boys who I had played with as a child, now adults the same age as myself (how does this happen?) and remembered. I met again another old family friend, who had also known my parents from Southwestern, then Perkins, then Austin when we moved here in 1974. I sat next to another dear friend whose connection to Glenn started with the Methodist Church and who knew my mother as a child in San Antonio, and another friend who knew my mother from Mount Wesley. All these streams returned to a branching moment and I think about the map that we do not have of our lives when we start them, the map that is drawn by our living, those points of connection from which we begin to move in a new direction, and always toward another branching encounter.

I started my day in friendship, one renewed and one beginning, and a kinship of mind that engages and changes me, challenges me to think and rethink myself, who I am in the world, and moves me toward a different understanding of myself, something I’d forgotten, something I neglected to see in the map of my life. “Some people are moons,” my new friend said, “some people are planets. I think you are a planet.” And I am caught by surprise at the description, this gift, which keeps coming to me, and I branch in a new direction, toward a new idea of myself in the world.

I ended my day in friendship, with two oldest friends, who I have known since the 4th grade (which will be 44 years ago in the September). We do not remember the moment of our meeting but seem to have always known each other, recognized each other from the start, even though we branched apart, we can always come back to our connecting point. We always show up, even now in the middle of our lives. I asked them, as if they are a legend to the map of myself, “What do you remember?”

“I remember being safe with you.”

“I remember recognizing you.”

I am looking back at the map, even as I branch, deepen, and begin to move in a new direction.

In my Disciple class earlier this week, we all stumbled on our human condition, which read, in part, “We believe in God but we have so little power. We want to witness, to heal to convert the nonbelievers” and that is where we balk. None of us are what we deemed “evangelists” in the way that it has come to mean. We do not actively seek to “convert nonbelievers.” We are quiet, respectful of other faiths. But I ask, because I wonder, how might we be doing that? Is there another way? One of us suggests we do that by our being, by living our faith of kindness, and we launch into a discussion of what power is, what we think of as spiritual power. Have we missed the moments of power simply because we do not recognize them? And in our beautiful conversation, our asking, we branch.

I am thinking of this today, as I read my Lenten prayer: “Dear God, your love is present to me. Make me always aware that it is mine to share with others.” I am looking back at my map, to see where the branching streams connected. I think about how I am now branching, moving into a new territory. “Make me always aware that it is mine to share” this kindness like a branching stream spreading out to meet the sea.